New Eyes

So big – the world of a child,
With horizons that never end.
So sad we adults know so much
And think the world their oyster;
No juice left to suck, smacking lips
With delight

One life’s all you’ve got

Such a hunger for life,
Such a need for living
More lives than just my own-
To be a boy again,
Ranging over fields and streams and parks,
And making games out of sticks, clouds and imagination.
To be caught up in the many tributaries of possibility,
Time and space giving up their secrets,
Coils of a snake taking one life
And giving another,
Worlds within worlds,
If only I could live them all.
But time is ticking and I only get one
The rest pile up in my head like a traffic accident 
And make me crazy,
Crazy to have some peace.
Like a gull I must return to the sea
And listen to the waves tell their endless story;
Everything’s different,
But everything’s the same.
Dreaming’s no crime just nature’s way of saying,
Spread your wings from time to time,
Write down or sing or paint it out before you burst,
And maybe you’ll bring something new and precious into the world.
But most of all just live,
Squeeze every drop,
Savior each breath,
For one life’s all you’ve got.

Fear of what comes next

When the fear of what comes next is over,
The endless holiday of the present begins,
For what is a holiday-
If it is not a time and place free from caring
About the world and your place in it?
Your place is now,
The world is now,
You are now.
So let us take this next step together,
Just this small, tiny step
And let the rest emerge as it will,
Seagulls on a deck-
Can leave anytime,
Without being aware they are free,
So let’s all stop sailing for worrytown
Shall we?

Ego

Writing when you don’t feel like writing
Is nothing but ego,
Like wanting a passing girl
When you’re already spent,
Ink from an expensive fountain pen
Splattered across the page.
But hey -
sometimes there’s a need
To check your reflection,
Feel the beat of your heart,
And know that it feels good.

The door between sleep and waking

Here is my monthly story, submitted for Sonia’s August Challenge.

A weight is falling; a world on my back. Under the bed I lie pinioned, face down as from the open door slides an alien presence, green as emerald. Servants of the Seleste, I guess; their masters dead as Moondust.

Yes…it is good that you fear us, comes a sibilant whisper. It is right you may not turn and look upon us, says the voice as I strain to see. For we are all you cannot permit to exist, all you cannot solve, all you cannot cow with intellect, but only grope at with sudden intuition and cold sweat. We make life unsafe. But rest with us now, lay with and accept us.

Unable to do anything else I acquiesce, but in the recesses and deep groves of stubborn thought I struggle and at last slip sideways, through the door between sleep and the blissful arms of waking.

Related articles

• The tide of sleep (zenmirror.wordpress.com)

The way of the pen

The way of the pen,
The mind of a Warrior,
Ink that flows like blood.

The tide of sleep

As the tide of sleep moves out,
Caves are left behind,
Long lost dreads and fears,
Now like dinosaur skeletons
Littering the early morning gloom.
Once I feared to tread
These spaces between sleep and waking,
But the tide has moved with time,
And I wonder at distant memories
Long abandoned now finally safe with teeth pulled out, venom drained,
So why does my stomach still flutter,
To walk in fields long ago left fallow,
By a mind consumed by adult things?

Life without a Script

To watch is not to control,

Influence is not pulling back one hand-

With the other,

But watching the stivings

Of the man you thought you were,

Till they cease,

Then watching on in wonder-

At what comes next;

Life without a script

And no starring character.

A Wall of Will

A wall of will

Bricking off feeling,

Fending off friends,

The world is not just thought,

There is more than clouds

Hiding the Moon,

A single tear starts the rainstorm,

A torrent to breach the mightiest dam,

Mankind will scoop water

From the river of feeling,

Or he will kneel to it

Unknowing

Grey hills

Sometimes, when wild intuitions have run their course,
I pine for the empty grey hills,
With only the bare wind for company,
No ages lost and whispered wide,
Just the wind and i and empty hills,
Beyond the contamination of these thoughts
That drag and push, rock and cry,
To the grey hills to lie down I go,
Into tombs covered up in the inky black
That seeps from caves of deep loneliness,
Such a draft could freeze a man’s blood,
But not I who burns, who rages at a billion degrees
I am ash coated in skin,
And here I am to lay down my bones
In the empty hills and rest awhile,
Dream of peace in a land no longer at war
With itself,
What do I do, what do I do now?
When the days of the past have run out
Another idea, and another
A dream to fire the eyes and fill the ears with the sound,
A falling rain of better coin,
Have I not chased down enough dreams?
Have I not pumped enough oil into this ceaseless engine of mind?
I want the still pool but cannot stop swimming,
I follow my nose because it can’t stop smelling
The taste of Arabia,
Market places and the deep desert beyond, always beyond
Like my life this writing undulates,
A coasting swell catch it and who knows where you’ll wash up,
I could spin thee tales year on year,
And a fine life perhaps I would tell
But strewn with disappointments caught up in the trough.
I will no longer becalmed look for the storm
To fling me to home away from home,
A light is burning in that cottage window
Over the dark marshes,
The candle throws it’s gloom upon the master’s face,
It is I in years when time has won
it’s Ravaged war upon my face
And hammered in resigned strength,
Erratic thoughts like wine in his old glass,
Sleepy belly contented from good food,
And worn out feet curled and warm by the fire,
It still burns from here I see,
he takes from it a brand when he needs to see a far off dream,
But mostly he needs it not to see the tearful eyes of youth across the marsh,
In the mirror they are the same,
And in those whites can be seen the breaking waves
That took him so far from home and back again
To The man he was supposed to be.
But the eye of the telescope is so sharp,
It can never see the rocks below looming close
Beneath the bow,
And neither can it see the man
You already were.
This journey’s steps may never grant such a vantage point,
To many pines whipping to and fro
Above deep foaming earth
Alive with life we’ll never see,
But neither will the worm see the stars
And so grey hills you can wait awhile,
For there’s some wondering and wandering to be done,
Like worms squirming in the earth,
And wine of life in jugs to drink,
And hands to clasp and friends to shake,
And women to bed and all is well,
On the morrow.
The sword will cut,
The bow will twang,
The eye will cry,
Thoughts will make the mind and the mind will think in turn,
A wheel spinning on and on-
And what loom does it spin?
This life.

Submitted for poetry potluck Week 47…